fray or suit. For to meddle with such a
retainer was perilous even for sheriff or judge; and the force which a
noble could summon at his call sufficed to overawe a law-court or to drag
a culprit from prison or dock. The evils of the system of "maintenance"
had been felt long before the Wars of the Roses; and statutes both of
Edward the First and of Richard the Second had been aimed against it. But
it was in the civil war that it showed itself in its full force. The
weakness of the Crown and the strife of political factions for supremacy
left the nobles masters of the field; and the white rose of the House of
York, the red rose of the House of Lancaster, the portcullis of the
Beauforts, the pied bull of the Nevilles, the bear and ragged staff which
Warwick borrowed from the Beauchamps, were seen on hundreds of breasts in
Parliament or on the battle-field.

[Sidenote: The Social Revolution]

The lawlessness of the baronage tended as it had always tended to the
profit of the crown by driving the people at large to seek for order and
protection at the hands of the monarchy. And at this moment the craving
for such a protection was strengthened by the general growth of wealth and
industry. The smaller proprietors of the counties were growing fast both
in wealth and numbers, while the burgess class in the cities were drawing
fresh riches from the developement of trade which characterized this
period. The noble himself owed his importance to his wealth. Poggio, as he
wandered through the island, noted that "the noble who has the greatest
revenue is most respected; and that even men of gentle blood attend to
country business and sell their wool and cattle, not thinking it any
disparagement to engage in rural industry." Slowly but surely the foreign
commerce of the country, hitherto conducted by the Italian, the Hanse
merchant, or the trader of Catalonia or southern Gaul, was passing into
English hands. English merchants were settled at Florence and at Venice.
English merchant ships appeared in the Baltic. The first faint upgrowth of
manufactures was seen in a crowd of protective statutes which formed a
marked feature in the legislation of Edward the Fourth. The weight which
the industrial classes had acquired was seen in the bounds which their
opinion set to the Wars of the Roses. England presented to Philippe de
Commines the rare spectacle of a land where, brutal as was its civil
strife, "there are no buildings destroyed or d